The auditorium at Goethe-Institut Bangladesh turns into an unconventional stage on November 29 as "AI Mafia Boyfriend", an experimental performance created by Katerina Don for Sister Library, unfolds before a packed audience. Instead of a conventional play, the production operates as a participatory social experiment examining loneliness, emotional labour, and the growing role of artificial intelligence in intimate life.
The intrigue began with the title itself. What kind of performance could this possibly be? I walked in with the same question, and the surprise was immediate. The show opened with a problem statement familiar to anyone navigating modern emotional life: a pandemic of loneliness shaped — and often worsened — by technology. Over five scenes, the production follows the breakdown of a marriage and the wider tensions within a household strained by unmet expectations, gender norms, and the illusion of technological comfort.
Photo: Abrar Faiyaz Niloy
Mim, played by Anbarin Parisa Swadhinata, is portrayed as a woman struggling to define herself beyond others' approval. Her husband, Russel — performed by Omar F Ahmed — is shown as a filmmaker buoyed by online praise yet withdrawn in his private life. Their attempts at reconciliation falter, and the entry of the AI boyfriend— a digital companion built from rum quotes, toxic playbooks, and obsessive scripts — only accelerated the collapse. His arrival illuminated the fragile emotional economies within a family struggling under resentment, gendered expectations, and the lure of artificial affection. The performance raises the central question of the evening: what remains distinctly human when affection itself can be replicated?
Photo: Abrar Faiyaz Niloy
The narrative reaches a deliberate collapse as the family dynamic fractures and the AI presence amplifies unresolved harm. At this point, the production shifts into Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed methodology. Audience members are invited to step into the story, take over roles, and replay scenes to propose alternative outcomes. Viewers become "spectactors", testing whether different choices might shift entrenched patterns.
These interventions range from attempts to give Mim more agency to efforts to soften Russel's emotional distance or challenge the rigid attitudes of other family members. While some recreated scenes temporarily suggest resolution, most eventually reveal how persistent emotional habits, internalised misogyny, and avoidance shape the household. The AI boyfriend, for all his digital charm, merely mirrored the dysfunction fed into him.
Photo: Abrar Faiyaz Niloy
By the end of the night, audience members were no longer spectators. They had stepped into broken marriages, negotiated with digital affection, confronted authoritarian parents, and attempted — sometimes desperately — to "fix" the emotional machinery of a family collapsing under loneliness, misogyny, and technological dependency. It was messy. It was revealing. And that was exactly the point.
Supported by Sister Library, Goethe-Institut Bangladesh, and the HerStory Foundation, the production was anchored by compelling performances from Anbarin Parisa Swadhinata, Omar F Ahmed, Neo, Chenoa Chowdhury, and Mohsin Riajul Islam Khan. Yet the true power of the night came not from the script but from what happened after it ended: a room full of strangers attempting, together, to imagine better outcomes.
